The Otterbury Incident

by C. Day Lewis

  ‘Never mind. Describe them.’

  So Ted started off, rather impatiently at first, but soon warming to his work. I jotted down notes, and it is partly from them that I reconstructed the description of Johnny Sharp which I have already given here. Then we went on to the Wart.

  ‘Well, he’s got a round face like a bun, with two little eyes like currants stuck in it. A pasty white face. He never looks straight at you; sort of furtive expression, like a dog who knows he’s done something wrong and is wondering if you know it,’ Ted said slowly. ‘He had no hat. He was wearing a scruffy old stained mackintosh and fawn-coloured flannel trousers. His shoes were dirty and down at heel, and cracked across the uppers.’

  Young Wakeley had begun to interrupt, but I shut him up. When Ted had finished his description, I made them re-enact the scene in the alleyway. Charlie played the part of Johnny Sharp, baring his teeth and leering at Ted in a hideous way, just like Johnny. Nick was the Wart.

  ‘You take the box, Ted,’ I said – it was still lying on the sitting-room table, ‘go out, and come in just as you did yesterday when you entered the alley … OK. Now, exactly where were these two standing?’

  Ted put them in position, leaning against the wall.

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Well, Johnny Sharp stopped me and said, “Brought home the bacon?” ’

  ‘Did he seem to know it was money in the box?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘He must’ve guessed,’ put in Charlie Muswell, and told us how Sharp had warned off the oafs who were trying to molest the concert party.

  We reconstructed the scene when Johnny Sharp had taken the box, shaken it, given it to the Wart to shake, then handed it back to Ted. From our reconstruction it became clear that, for a moment or two while the Wart was holding the box, Johnny Sharp had been standing between him and Ted, so that Ted did actually lose sight of the box. On the other hand, it was utterly impossible that, within this time, the Wart could have taken out the money and replaced it with scrap-iron, even if he’d had a skeleton key to unlock the box. So we were stymied once again.

  I noticed young Wakeley was jigging about still, and asked him sarcastically if he wanted to leave the room.

  ‘N-no,’ he stuttered eagerly. ‘I just w-want to know why the Wart was wearing a m-mackintosh.’

  ‘Why the blue blazes shouldn’t he?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Well, he never does. And it was a fine day, wasn’t it?’

  Talk about out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! After an instant of stunned silence, we got it; we rushed at young Wakeley and pounded him on the back.

  ‘By gum, yes! Suppose he had another box, exactly like Ted’s, and wanted to substitute it?’ I said. ‘He’d be able to conceal it under the mackintosh.’

  Once again we re-enacted the episode, using a couple of large fat books instead of the real box. It worked! While Johnny Sharp held Ted in conversation, it would have been possible for the Wart, screened by Johnny, to have put the real box under his arm, beneath the mackintosh, and whipped out the fake one for Johnny to hand back! Ted remembered now that the Wart’s mackintosh had been unbuttoned, which was a bit of corroborating evidence. But, the next moment, he damped our spirits down to zero again by saying:

  ‘That’s all very well. But how on earth could they have got hold of a box exactly similar to our one – even to the cross scratched on the bottom?’

  We all scratched our heads. ‘They must have seen our box – that’s the only solution,’ said Nick, after a pause.

  ‘They didn’t, though,’ Ted answered. He went on to say that, after the Prune had presented us with the box, he’d taken it home and kept it on the chest of drawers in his bedroom until yesterday: neither Johnny Sharp nor the Wart had come into the house – he’d asked Rose about this.

  ‘Well, I still think it’s j. suspicious,’ said Charlie. ‘I mean, why did Johnny Sharp drive off the oicks who were following the concert party round? It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect him to do. Unless he wanted us to make as much money as possible, for him to pinch later.’

  It was a good point, we all agreed. Then Nick exclaimed,

  ‘I’ve got it! They must have broken into this house, to look for the box and take its measurements and so on.’

  ‘But how could they know about the box at all?’ Ted protested. ‘I never told them.’

  ‘Well, the Prune might have let it out. Or anyone. I bet some of us talked about Operation Glazier beforehand, and perhaps mentioned that we had a box to keep the funds in; and you know how things get around in Otterbury,’ I said.

  ‘Obviously the first thing to do is to grill the Prune,’ said Nick. ‘Find out if he told them about the box.’

  ‘A fat lot you’ll get out of him!’ said Charlie. ‘Still, it’s worth trying.’

  ‘We can always beat him up,’ said Nick. ‘Third degree.’

  ‘No,’ I put in, ‘we’ve got to use tact. He’s in with Toppy again now, and he’ll have protection. Anyway, we’ve another thing to investigate as well. Were there any signs of your room having been feloniously entered, Ted –’

  ‘What entered?’

  ‘Bust into, then – between the time you first brought home the box and yesterday?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Let’s go and have a look.’

  We trooped upstairs to his bedroom. It’s on the second floor. Obviously, unless the criminals had walked in at the back door or through the shop, and come upstairs, they must have used a ladder and got in by the bedroom window. We could see no recent scratches on the woodwork of the window, though of course the trail would have been pretty cold by now anyway. So we went down again, to interview Ted’s sister. She was absolutely certain that neither Sharp nor the Wart had come to the back door last week: she admitted, looking a bit embarrassed, that Johnny Sharp was in the shop on Thursday afternoon; but she said he’d been talking to her all the time and couldn’t have gone upstairs.

  ‘Could the Wart – you know, that chap Joseph Seeds – have slipped into the shop unobserved and gone upstairs while Sharp was holding you in conversation?’ I asked.

  Rose admitted it was theoretically possible; but she could almost have sworn that it hadn’t happened. I must say she was very decent about it all – I mean, she didn’t patronize our efforts at detection as most grown-ups would have done. What’s more, she gave us permission to examine the premises whenever we wished. She looked rather down-in-the-mouth, though, and I suspected this was partly the result of her quarrel with Rickie: I made a private vow to try and bring them together again when we’d cleared up the mystery of the stolen money: I suppose I’ve got a soft spot for Beauty in Distress.

  Well, we went out into the backyard next. And here we had our first stroke of luck. I’d better describe the layout. The alleyway, where Ted was stopped by Sharp and the Wart, is of course at right angles to the street. It leads to an asphalt path, parallel with the street at the back of the houses. Between this path and the house-backs there are small yards: each house has one; they are separated from each other and the path by wooden fences, breast-high. Each yard has a gate leading in from the path. Up against the inside of her bit of fence, which is just about fifteen feet from the house itself, Rose Marshall had made a flower bed.

  Rose borrowed a ladder for us from some neighbours, because we wanted to work out just what would happen if you tried to get in at Ted’s bedroom window. We hoisted the ladder up, but the bottom end of it seemed likely to slip on the smooth surface of the yard, so we brought this end back to rest firmly in the flower bed.

  We were just about to plant it there when I yelled, ‘Stop! Keep it off!’ They thought I’d gone mad: till I pointed at two indentations in the earth of the flower bed, just where we’d have put the ladder down, and about the same distance apart as the feet of the ladder. The marks were fairly deep, and scuffed out towards the fence, as you’d expect to happen when a ladder was taken up to be carr
ied away. Well, it never rains but it pours. Hardly had we discovered this clue when Ted gave a shout. He’d been examining the flower bed. Just behind a clump of flowers, a few feet away from the ladder-marks, plain as a mole on a baby’s bottom, there was a footprint!

  It was not Ted’s, or Rose’s. It was much bigger – a man’s footprint, without a doubt. Oh boy, oh boy, did we go up in the air! When we’d cooled down a bit, I got Ted to fetch a bucket and an empty seed-box. We placed them upside down over the footprint and the ladder-marks respectively, to ensure that these clues should not be obliterated.

  What were we to do next? Nick Yates, who seemed to have turned into a sort of human bulldozer, was all for kidnapping Johnny Sharp and the Wart, dragging them along here, and fitting their feet into the print. However, saner counsels prevailed. I suggested the first thing to do was to make a plaster cast of the footmark – Scotland Yard always does that – and then to examine Ted’s window-sill for fingerprints. Well, of course we hadn’t the apparatus. Ted thought we ought to call in the regular police at this stage: but we pointed out that, if we did, the whole business would have to come out, and the police mightn’t be quite so convinced of Ted’s innocence as we were. Then I thought of E. Sidebotham. True, he was pretty balmy. On the other hand, as I’ve told you, he made a hobby of crime, and he might possibly have the necessary stuff for taking finger-prints and making a plaster cast. So it was agreed that Nick and I should interview E. Sidebotham, while Charlie, who was on better terms with Toppy than the rest of us, should make tactful inquiries whether any of his lot, particularly the Prune, had told Johnny Sharp or the Wart about the money box. Ted was to remain here and keep an eye on the flower bed. Young Wakeley had to buzz off home: but he’d certainly done his bit when he’d asked why the Wart should have been wearing a mac on a beautiful fine day.

  Nick and I rang the bell of E. Sidebotham’s shop. He let us in, and took us upstairs. We told him as much of the story as we thought necessary – that a large sum of money had been stolen from Ted Marshall’s room, and we had found certain clues we wanted his advice about. When I had finished my story E. Sidebotham tapped his nose with his finger, moved stealthily to the door, and flung it open, as though there might be a spy the other side. Then, carefully shutting it again, he came back and hissed right in my face.

  ‘You suspect foul play?’

  I nodded. Neither Nick nor I dared speak, lest we should burst out with the giggles we were bottling up.

  ‘Say no more. Wait here,’ muttered E. Sidebotham conspiratorially, and padded out of the room.

  When the door opened again, five minutes later, Nick went off with a fizzing noise, which he turned into a sort of strangled yelp like a hen with whooping-cough, and then pretended to have a severe attack of coughing. I must have been blue in the face myself, trying not to laugh. For the apparition at the door was a knock-out. E. Sidebotham had put on a huge old check ulster, and a sort of Sherlock Holmes tweed hat was perched on his enormous head: what’s more, he was wearing dark glasses, and a false beard which frizzed out from his chin like a sweep’s brush. Seeing how we goggled at him, he said:

  ‘Disguise is necessary for my work. You’d never have never recognized your old pal, Ernie Sidebotham, would you, boys?’

  We shook our heads dumbly. We couldn’t trust ourselves to speak. The great detective had not disguised his person only: he even put on a false voice – a thin, piercing falsetto which contrasted so oddly with his usual rumbling bass that Nick was pretty well in convulsions. I was filled with horror at the idea of walking through Otterbury in broad daylight with such a Guy-Fawkes-like figure. However, E. Sidebotham relieved my apprehensions by saying:

  ‘We must not be seen together. You two go ahead. We’ll meet at the premises in five minutes’ time.’

  He was as good as his word. We showed him the ladder-marks and the footprint. He took a magnifying glass out of the satchel slung across his shoulders, went down on hands and knees, and crawled cautiously towards the footprint as though he was stalking it. He scrutinized the clues for some time, muttering to himself.

  Sherlock Sidebotham at work

  ‘Aren’t you going to take a plaster cast?’ Nick suggested.

  ‘I’ve a strange feeling that I’ve seen this footprint before. Now whose could it have been?’

  ‘You mean you know whose it is?’ I asked excitedly.

  ‘A long shot, Watson, a very long shot,’ he went on in his bloodcurdling falsetto. At that instant an idea came to me. It was a long shot, too.

  ‘Mr Sidebotham,’ I said, ‘you know that coat button you were examining yesterday when I came into your shop? You said you’d found it on enclosed premises. Was it here you found it?’

  He reared up on hands and knees, giving me a wild sort of look from his glazed eyes. ‘Watson,’ he replied, ‘there are times when I have hopes of you. The answer to your query is, in one word, “Yes”. Here. Just beside the flower bed.’

  He fumbled in the satchel and produced the button, then laid it on the spot where it had been found. I asked him if I could borrow it. My idea was that, if we could somehow manage to compare it with the buttons on Johnny Sharp’s and the Wart’s coats, and discover that one of them had recently sewn on a new button, we should have yet another piece of evidence against them.

  E. Sidebotham said we might borrow it. He had taken a sheet of stiff paper and a scissors from the satchel, and he was cutting the paper to the shape of the footprint. I must say he did it wizardly; the paper cut-out fitted exactly over the footprint when he’d finished. Of course the trouble was that it did not reproduce the pattern of the shoe-sole which had made it, as a plaster cast would have done. Still, it was something. And it gave Ted a bright notion. While E. Sidebotham beetled up the ladder to examine the window-sill, Ted was saying:

  ‘Look, we can find out if Johnny Sharp or the Wart made this footprint. See how? We’ll start up the Shoe-shine business again tomorrow morning.’

  His idea was to cut out in cardboard, using Mr Sidebotham’s paper one, a model of the footprint in the flower bed, and compare this with the soles of our two suspects. The difficulty, of course, would be to persuade them to have their shoes cleaned at all – to persuade the Wart, at any rate, whose shoes looked as if they’d never been cleaned in his life. While we were discussing this problem, the Abbey bells began to ring and Charlie Muswell had to dash off for Evensong. He’d only just gone when a voice hailed me from the other side of the fence.

  ‘What on earth are you up to, George?’

  It was Toppy, with Peter Butts. The situation, as you can imagine, called for tact. I didn’t want to give away our clues to the ‘regular’ police: on the other hand, anything which helped to prove Ted’s innocence should be made common property.

  ‘Has Marshall any objection to our inspecting his premises?’ asked Toppy in a cold, official voice.

  ‘Have you a search warrant?’ I said stiffly. It was a bit thick – the line Toppy was taking with Ted, refusing to address him directly at all.

  ‘No,’ replied Toppy. ‘Of course, if Marshall refuses to let us come in, we shall draw our own conclusions.’

  ‘You can search the house till you’re blue in the face, for all I care,’ Ted exclaimed. He was looking white and miserable again; and I noticed Nick angrily straining at the leash. It seemed the moment for a spot of oil on the troubled waters.

  ‘Mr Sidebotham!’ I called. ‘The police are here. Detective Inspector Toppingham and Detective Sergeant Butts.’

  He came lumbering down the ladder. ‘Ah, Scotland Yard,’ he said. ‘The police are baffled, eh? You should know my methods by now, Inspector. Apply them. The flower bed is not without interest.’

  ‘What on earth is he talking about?’ interrupted Peter rudely.

  I explained, showing them the marks in the soft soil and telling them our suspicions. Toppy shook back the lock of hair out of his eyes. He measured with a glance the ladder down which E. Sidebotham had just cl
imbed. Then he turned to Ted.

  ‘What time do you normally go to bed?’

  ‘About nine o’clock. Why?’

  ‘Never mind why. Did you go to bed later than this any night last week?’

  ‘I – no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do you sleep soundly?’

  ‘I suppose so. But what –?’

  ‘So soundly that you wouldn’t have been woken up if someone had entered your bedroom by that window?’

  ‘Well, no. I expect it would have woken me.’

  Ted had said it before I could stop him. It was a most damaging admission. I could see now what Toppy’s questions were leading to. Toppy went on remorselessly:

  ‘You’re suggesting, then, that someone came into the yard, in broad daylight, with a ladder the length of this one, and climbed up, and got through your window, to look at the box, and none of the neighbours noticed anything odd about it?’

  ‘He probably pretended to be a house-painter, or a window-cleaner,’ said Nick. ‘That’s what thieves often do.’

  ‘Everyone in Otterbury knows Johnny Sharp and the Wart, and knows that neither of them ever does a stroke of work. It’d have been all over the town if they’d started cleaning windows. Anyway, your sister would have seen them.’

  ‘Not if she was in the shop,’ replied Ted.

  ‘Yes, and on Thursday afternoon Ted’s sister says Johnny Sharp came into the shop and kept her talking a long time,’ I put in excitedly. ‘The Wart could have brought the ladder round and done the job while his accomplice was holding her in conversation.’

  ‘Oh, could he just? Let’s try. The Wart is a puny specimen, and Mr Sidebotham – beg his pardon, Mr Sherlock Holmes – is a big, strong chap. Would you mind lifting the ladder down, and then putting it up to the window again?’

  Well, that tore it. E. Sidebotham got the ladder down, with some difficulty: but, try as he would, he couldn’t lift the heavy thing up again. It’s a knack, I dare say. It ought to have been very funny, seeing him in his false beard and absurd tweed hat, puffing and blowing with the strain of the ladder: but nobody even smiled. I think it was then that I first realized how serious the whole business was.